Steps to changing behaviors; Part 1: Function
Part 1 of 2
When we talk about changing our (or other people’s) behavior, we often say that it takes time. Changing is cannot be done in a snap. I agree. It can be difficult to stop doing something you’re used to. The inertia of habit is hard to go against. Meet it with an equal opposite force and you’re probably in for an accident.
Imagine this. You’re driving your BRABUS G V12 900 “ONE OF TEN” (welcome to my fantasy?) at 100 km/h — because that is the legal limit on most national highways in the Philippines, but you’re free to drive faster in your imagination — and you see a what looks like a huge pothole coming in from a distance. Your Brabus won’t save you from Philippine road craters; and might be wiser to save your Brabus from them instead. You think about swerving to either lanes beside you. However, you see two other cars on each of the lanes beside you. What do you do?
a. Wait until you’re near enough to confirm that it is a pothole and then step hard on the breaks.
b. Change lanes immediately. Just do it.
c. Slow down a bit and wait for the other cars to go ahead or give way for you so you can change lane.
Now, think of the road as your life, the lane is your behavior, the pothole is the consequence of your actions, and the two other cars are your responsibilities. Basically, the two other cars are adultings.
We build habits and craft our behavior patterns which eventually lead to consequences (or rewards), while life — responsibilities happen around us. Do we hit the proverbial breaks or take the proverbial swerve to avoid consequences while risking hitting everything else in our life?
Wait. Have you thought about your answer to the multiple choice question above? I believe that a sensible driver will answer C. Choices A and B endanger both you and others.
Changing behaviors is a process of thinking slow, multi-step process; meaning it takes time, effort, and even resources.
Dr. Samir Al-Alfy proposed a communication model for changing behavior he calls the Stages of Behavior Change. The model is a series of escalating platforms, a stairway, which begins at the lowest level Awareness and ends at the highest stage Maintenance. This is a Communications model, thus the use of “audience”. However, I think it can be used to drive personal change. (Our greatest audience is ourselves afterall.)
Behavior change model — stairway model
At any given time and at any given topic or point of interest, we are on a specific stage. Using the topic “quiting smoking”, I’ll summarize the 6 stages. I’ll also use a hypothetical character, Mark as an example:
Awareness — You are aware that something exists. But that’s all. You don’t act on this knowledge; not even move eyebrow over it.
- Mark, a smoker, sees on the boxes of cigarettes that smoking causes all kinds of diseases. He also reads about it on the internet and sees it on television.
Comprehension & Risk Perception — You start putting effort in knowing more about something. You start looking at its benefits, its costs, its pros and its cons. You try to understand them. You start cooking the proverbial stew… but you have yet to decide when its done.
- After seeing all kinds of communication against smoking. Mark researches more about cigarettes and nicotine use. He thinks about how cigarettes help him cut calories, help him get through a typical stressful work day, and bond with his boss. But he also mulls over the costs of purchasing cigarettes daily; not to mention the harm he will have to deal with in the future.
Decision-making — You decide to cross the bridge or to take a turn the forked path. In decision-making, you sign a mental contract with yourself to abandon all other possibilities to pursue the path you chose. But you have yet to take the first step.
- Mark has assessed the issue with all the information he has. He takes a deep breath and says to himself: “I will do it. I will stop smoking. Withdrawals will not change my decision!” He decides to stop smoking.
Intention — In this stage, you finally make the first move towards your new path. Making a decision is one thing, but having the intention is another. We’ve all done this with our diets. Today, “I will go on a diet tomorrow!”; tomorrow the same old routine happens. On a different note, just imagine all the laws signed but never implemented. What’s lacking is the intention to implement them.
- But did Mark stop? Although Mark told himself that he will stop, from time to time he sneaks a puff from his last stash of cigs. He gives himself a week to slowly quit smoking. He lessens his use by 50%. At week’s end, he throws away all of his smoking paraphernalia.
Action — If you were able to reach this stage, congratulations! That’s half the job. You actually took the first step and actually crossed the bridge. You talked yourself into doing something. Action is delivering the intention…at least once.
- One day passes. He resists the urge to take a puff. Mark puts himself in situations that prevent him from smoking. When he sees his boss walk towards him with a pack (their ritual of invitation to smoke), he stands up to go to do something somwhere else. He also tells his team that he has decided to quit smoking. He chews gum. A month passes and then two, and then a year. Mark has overcome the urge to smoke. He quit!
Maintenance — On this stage, you need to be feel why you need to continue this new behavior. A bad experience during the Action stage might lead to the end of the road with you. But even though the experience might not be that good during Action, a great maintenance strategy can still sustain your your behavior. A big however though is even though you had a great experience during Action, if you do not have an effective Maintenance strategy, the behavior you’re encouraging might still stop.
- To stick to this new behavior, Mark has joined support groups online and offline. He receives messages from his sponsors and from health and fitness sites he follow. He tells his journey to quitting smoking on his website and helps support others who are trying to quit as well.
While the model is straightforward about our journey towards the change we desire for ourselves. What do we actually need to move up? To climb up we need an opposite reaction to drive our action. A propulsion.
In Part 2, I give an unsolicited modification to this model. My modification adds depth to this stairway model to help us understand what taking a “step up” needs from us. My idea: the higher we go up the stairway, we deeper it needs to dig within us.
